


Love Will Take You For A Ride If You Let It

by gala_apples



Series: The Reason That I'm Howling Is You [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Background Poly, Bisexual Female Character, Child Abuse, Concerts, Crushes, F/F, F/M, First Gay Kiss, First Time, Past Sexual Abuse, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-OT7, Pre-Poly, Public Sex, Timeline Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:20:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25017655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: Bev doesn't want to go to Indiana for summer vacation. She wants to stay in Derry, and enjoy every moment with the only six people in the world who matter to her. Unfortunately it's not her choice, and to Indiana she goes. But, in the first kindness the threads of Fate have ever shown her, Bev ends up in a video rental store her first evening in Hawkins. Things unspool unpredictably from there.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon/Ben Hanscom/Eddie Kaspbrak/Beverly Marsh/Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris, Robin Buckley/Beverly Marsh
Series: The Reason That I'm Howling Is You [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1811530
Comments: 13
Kudos: 27





	Love Will Take You For A Ride If You Let It

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is tagged for timeline shenanigans and aged-up characters because I'm not following either fandom's canonical setting year. Robin has graduated and season three happened the previous summer. Bev is heading into senior year, and the encounter with Pennywise happened the summer between sophomore and junior year.
> 
> This fic was written for the prompt 'first time' for seasonofkink, and is easily the longest thing I've ever written for a bingo challenge.
> 
> Lastly, this fic includes all the nasty things from the It duology. Homophobia, bullying, and child abuse including sexual, medical, emotional neglect and physical neglect. Most of it is just referenced, but it's there.

It hurts to leave them. After a year of codependency, after always having at least one of the Losers nearby until late at night, to get it ripped away is terrible. Excruciating, even. The gang gathers in her driveway to say their goodbyes, bikes scattered across the lawn, and Bev wants to scream. For the next nine weeks she’ll be living with her aunt in a tiny town in Indiana. It’s not the ‘long distance’ of Mike on the farm while they’re at school, it’s real distance. The only thing that stops Richie from breaking into the trunk and hitching a ride with them is Bill’s hand on his shoulder, and the only thing that keeps Bill that strong is knowing her return date. It’s only the summer, just some temp research job Aunt Margaret got, applied for at a lofty whim and by the cruel hand of fate, given to her rather than the hundred other applicants. It’s the whole summer, but she’ll be back for Senior year.

The drive takes two days. It’s an eighteen hour drive down the I-90, and Bev doesn’t have her license, so Aunt Margaret has to do the whole thing. She’d feel guilty, except it wasn’t her damn idea to leave Derry in the first place. She goes through pair after pair of batteries, the headphones to her Walkman never leaving her ears. They get a hotel for the night in Youngstown, and Bev waits until Aunt Margaret’s asleep before she retreats to the lobby so she can do her wordsearch book. By eight am they’re back on the road, eating donuts in the car rather than spending the time to go to a diner.

The house they’re renting is a decent size. Three bedrooms, a full bathroom and a half bath in the basement, kitchen, living room and wide porch running the length of the house. Bev can imagine everyone pooling comics and reading in the shade of a sunny morning. She shakes her head before the idea can embed its barb too deeply, and brings another duffle bag into the house. They didn’t pack tons, just a few duffles of clothing and personal items like her quilt and Margaret’s typewriter. No furniture needed, the house is fully furnished. But it’s not a home, it’s just an oversized hotel. Bev knows she won’t find comfort here.

The night they move in, Bev bikes downtown to rent a movie. She saw the place during the drive into town and can’t think of a better way to spend a few hours. Not in a happy go lucky Ben kind of way. In a depressing, cynical, I have nothing of purpose or joy to do, might as well watch something way. The store is in the middle of a strip mall. The green awning proclaims Family Video in red writing, and the door chimes when she opens it. There’s about twelve shelves of videos, and a large counter in the middle of the room, a box in which the employees are trapped for eight hours at a time, unless of course they’re reorganising the displays.

There are two people behind the counter, a pretty boy and a pretty girl. About the same height, both white, both in green vest uniforms over their own clothes. The boy’s hair is lighter and poofier than the girl’s, which hangs down in slight waves. The nametags proclaim him Steve and her Robin.

It’s Steve who reacts first to her walking in. “You’re a new face. Never rent a movie before?”

“Never been in this town before. My aunt has a temporary posting here over the summer.”

Bev’s not sure why she can’t stop looking at Robin. It should be Steve who captures her eye. Steve is a brunet with sun bleached blond streaks. He’s got an easy grin and sparkling brown eyes, like Ben. Bev’s spent some time thinking about Ben’s face, surely this near match should attract her. It must be Robin’s freckles. She’s never seen a girl with so many scattered across her face like fairy dust.

“So we do two day rental, and week plus popcorn rental. I’m supposed to upsell you, but Keith just hit on me at shift change again, so I’ll help you with the math. Two day rental is a better deal.” It’s the first thing Robin’s said. Beverly is struck by the rasp of Robin’s voice, the lightness of it, like pancakes with double the dose of baking soda.

“That’s very risk-getting-fired of you.”

Steve shakes his head. “Putz isn’t going to fire either of us. If he did he’d have to work nights again, and that would cut into his creeping at women at bars time.”

Bev’s not sure what to say next. She doesn’t know these two, she doesn’t know the employee they don’t like, and she’s got no reason to care if they get fired or not, besides the kindness of saving her a few quarters.

“Do you want some recommendations, or are you wanting to browse?”

She doesn’t care. It’s not like she’s here for the movie. She’s here because it’s a brief distraction from the nightmare of being away from the Losers for more than two months. “You’re the employees with knowledge of your product, right? Go ahead, sell me something.”

“How do you feel about music inspired films?”

“Like a musical?” Beverly’s never gotten into theatre. She can see how she could have in another life, theatre is a classic outlet for the outcasts and dorks of a school. But she doesn’t need theatre. She has bikes and clubhouses in the woods and lifelong coulrophobia. The closest she gets to musical knowledge is being able to sing ‘doe, a deer’ from The Sound Of Music, but she’s pretty sure everyone can.

“Not quite. More like a cassette of music people film a movie around. I’ve been getting into them lately. Probably my favourite is called Blues Brothers. It’s about a found family of musicians raising money to help nuns keep their orphanage open.”

“Uh-”

“It’s not as sappy as it seems,” Steve rushes to clarify. “John Candy’s in it. And there’s car chases, and the funniest scene I’ve seen all year. This nun, she’s talking to the main characters and they accidentally swear so she hits them with a ruler. And it hurts, because yeah, getting swatted with a ruler hurts, so they swear again, and she hits them again. It ramps up like crazy, and they end up falling down a flight of stairs. I nearly pissed myself laughing.”

“Or if you want something more dramatic, there’s Taxi Driver. It’s a neo-noir psychological drama, about a taxi driver who descends into violent madness, using the excuse of avenging a twelve year old prostitute he befriends to go on a killing spree. Which is completely just an excuse, you get this sense that he’d kill anyone for any reason. Because obviously pimps are gross, but he also hates this presidential candidate who’s done nothing wrong.” Robin summarizes. 

It’s probably a great film, but Beverly doesn’t need more angst. She produces enough of her own. Besides, choosing to watch a movie with child molestation sounds like a very bad decision. “Sure. I’ll rent Blues Brothers. Which section is it in?”

Robin sighs, her hair in her face enough that the exhale makes it flutter. “I’ll get it. That’s one point, and one point only, Harrington.”

Steve nods his head towards Robin, while making eye contact with Bev. “Just the kind of service we offer. Oh, and you’ll need a membership card, so we can charge you viciously if you never bring the movie back.”

Bev spends the next few minutes filling out the paperwork. She puts the borrowed pen down on the counter and slides everything over to Robin, who begins to register it. 

“Are you looking for stuff to do around town?”

Bev shrugs. She doesn’t want to be unfriendly, even if the homesickness is already hitting her hard. She’s spent too long getting shit on by everyone at school to belittle wisps of kindness, even if they do make her wary and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Not to mention the knowledge of having absolutely no backup, should something happen. What could happen? What possible danger could she be in, in small town Indiana? Well, no one would have expected It either, so who knows what nasty bullshit Hawkins might be hiding. Being alone is terrible. If they’re about to ask her to hang out, she’ll say yes.

They don’t though. Instead they give her local hot spot tips, complete with personal stories about why they’re great places. It’s information that could be used to gather temporary friends, but Bev feels tired. She just wants to lay in bed and think about her real friends in Derry. 

“Thanks for that,” she manages, on the edge of her people limit.

“Remember when you return it on Wednesday to bring it after two. It’ll be our shift. We can talk about it, see if you’ve seen the light.” Steve sighs when no one reacts. “You’ll understand that joke tomorrow.”

“I understand it now, dingus. It's just not that funny,” Robin mocks.

Bev bikes back to the house, wallet with a new card and a few less dollars in it shoved down the back pocket of her jeans. It’s warm enough to be wearing shorts, but she doesn’t feel like baring skin to the world right now. It’s too much like baring her soul. She sits at a table that looks nothing like hers, eats food bought from a weird grocery store off a plate that’s plain white instead of honey yellow floral print. Every bit of her is uncomfortable, like fur rubbed in the wrong direction. Her entire body craves distraction from Richie, empathy and a shoulder to lean on from Bill, a sudden kind gift from Ben. All of it is lost to her. 

It’s hard. She wants to deeply resent Aunt Margaret for this, but it’s hard to hate the person who got her away from her father’s house. The months since she stepped in have been significantly less nerve wracking. Less like living in a permanent nasty emergency. So even that feeling sits on her like a soggy bag of flour, not being justified in hating the person that took her away from her best friends. 

After dinner she does retreat to her supposed bedroom. She has to, it’s the only escape she has left. It’s a little easier there, because she’s got the quilt the boys made her for Christmas. It’s not new, it’s something pulled from the Denbrough linen closet, but it’s been written on in Sharpie in a million different directions, in six steady hands. It’s the one thing of theirs she has here, it’s not like she could have asked to take a t-shirt from each of their closets so she could keep smelling them. Richie would have found that funny, and maybe Bill would have handed one over too, but Ben would have felt self-conscious and the others would have found it weird. It would have crossed a line. _That_ line.

Bev doesn’t watch the clock, just lays there in misery until she can hear Aunt Margaret going through the motions of getting ready for bed. She knocks on the door but doesn’t come in, choosing to stand on the other side and remind Bev of her job starting tomorrow and the hours she’ll be gone. Bev can’t bring herself to say good night or good luck, and then feels ridiculous about the spite of the inaction.

When she’s sure Aunt Margaret is asleep, or at least not going to come back out of her bedroom, Bev gets up and sneaks into the living room. If she lays there for five more minutes she’s going to lay there for the next ten hours, too melancholic to be able to fall asleep. Bev’s already got enough problems trying to relax enough to fall asleep, she can’t compound that with cheating herself out of feeling tired. She gets the bag with the VHS in it from the table beside the front door and spends the next five minutes figuring out the VCR before finally settling on the couch to watch.

She’s not expecting how good it is. She took Steve’s recommendation because it sounded less bleak than Robin’s, and because enjoying the movie wasn't really the point. But Blues Brothers is actually good. Them driving the Nazis off the bridge makes her want to cheer for Mike and Stan’s sakes. And the complete overkill of the SWAT team at the end is hilarious. Steve’s wrong about the best song though. It’s not the church song, the see the light song. It’s the song at the diner. Think, it’s probably called. He’s wrong, and she actually cares enough to want to tell him so. Maybe she’ll go back tomorrow, rather than wait the forty eight hours.

Bev tries to make a normal day of the first full day of summer vacation in Hawkins, but it’s pretty much impossible. Yeah, she can push herself out of bed around noon and eat a bowl of cereal, but when she gets hungry there’s no sharing half a bag of chips with Mike as Eddie wails about them having not washed their hands. She can take a book off the bookshelf in the living room and start to read the first chapter, but there’s no Bill or Stan to sit back to back with, just the stupid couch. She can bike around, but the quarry here is differently shaped and not good for swimming in, and even if it was, where’s the gang to play shoulder wars with?

After dinner she bikes back to Family Video. They’re both there, again. Robin’s wearing the same red lipstick she was before. It looks as good on her today as it did yesterday, like her lips are candied apple. The shirt under her uniform vest is a lavender that goes great with her skin tone and is fitted enough to show the curve of her breasts. Her hair falls in loose waves around her face, making the shape of her head alluring and gypsylike. Bev bets she’s wearing delicious smelling perfume, bets that, unlike Bev who is sweating from her bike in the July humidity, Robin is like a field of flowers. Steve’s hair continues to be gravity defying, but everything else about him blends into nothing special comparatively. Robin’s just kinda awesome.

That said, Steve does have a lot of interesting opinions and facts about Blues Brothers. 

He and Robin apparently know a sheriff who would absolutely pursue a driver through a shopping mall. Even more interesting than two freshly minted adults having a jolly relationship with a cop -something Bev cannot fathom being true in Derry- is that last year Hawkins Star Court burned down before Hopper had the chance. The way they’re giggling at each other is proof Beverly’s not getting the whole story, but why would they tell a stranger every detail? Bev can’t imagine sharing her inside jokes with the Losers with a random stranger, if anyone ever cared to ask.

Steve thinks the movie would have been even better with one more wrong genre performance. Like instead of just the Country and Western bar, they also played a punk venue. Murph and the Magic Tones are proof that some of them could go lounge, but imagine Donald Duck Dunn trying to pull off reggae. Or alt rock. Bev agrees that it’d be pretty funny seeing Jake and Elwood try to go industrial. Hell, they barely pulled off regular music in the concert hall in the end.

It’s interesting too that the Blues Brothers was a band before they made a comedy movie, and that all the actors are their own musicians. Bev can barely handle playing her keyboard. Playing, acting, and dancing seems like too much talent for one person to handle. Robin chimes in here, talking about band class at her high school. It’s a funny story, Bev laughs more than once.

Steve even has a friend, Nancy, who has a cassette of Aretha Franklin, the woman who sang Think. He’s willing to lend it to Bev when she comes back to Family Video. 

After such a good offer, there’s no way Bev can leave without renting something. She lets Steve talk her into getting Trading Spaces, a comedy with Dan Aykroyd, the guy who played Elwood. She almost doesn’t want to leave when the transaction is done. Conversation with strangers is better than the endless silence of her rented soulless house.

Once again, Bev watches it late at night, to distract herself from her insomnia. It was bad in Derry, and it’s even worse here. Trading Spaces is funny, and has things to say about class and race that make her think about her friends. So of course she bikes back to Family Video the next day so she can share her thoughts. There’s no alternative, besides asking Aunt Margaret to watch it with her so they can talk about it, and Bev’s not ready for that yet. There’s a difference between civil and engaged. Lucky for her Robin and Steve both have a lot of things to say about the movie, the themes and favourite scenes and other movies it reminds them of. Every time Bev thinks it’s about time she should get going, one of them says something else super interesting that has her lingering to keep talking.

On Thursday when she comes in after dinner to return Animal House Steve’s wearing red nail polish. Beverly is stumped on if she should say something. Some people like to be complimented on their new wardrobe choices, like Stan. Some are content if their acknowledgment comes in the form of insults, like Richie with his Hawaiian shirts. And some people like their experiments unmentioned like Bill and that time with the fedora. Bev likes Steve, mostly, but she doesn’t know him well enough to know the best reaction.

It’s moot though, because he sees her looking at his hands, and immediately calls her on it. “Foxy like Farrah Fawcett, huh? El painted them, she’s practicing girl stuff and Max’s were already done. I gotta keep it on for at least twenty four hours or Mike will kill me.”

Bev frowns. She thought she knew Steve and Robin’s friends already; Nancy, Jonathan, Tiffany, Monique. Those are the names that have come up in anecdotes so far. It’s pretty intimate to let a girl demasculinize you like that, implies getting something worth it in return. She assumed Steve was dating Robin, but what if it’s this El? 

“Dingus, she doesn’t know any of those people. It’s all gibberish.” Robin turns to her. “Steve’s got a cult of freshmen. And one middle schooler, but she hates everyone, including him, so she only counts as a half.”

A cult? Bev spent last summer trying to avoid and kill an evil ancient entity. She’s not quite in the mood to befriend a cult leader.

“She’s greatly overexaggerating.”

“Cult still sounds better than my adult friend hangs out with tiny children,” Robin replies before sticking the ten-for-a-dollar lollipop back in her mouth.

“Wow, you’re such a bitch,” Steve says, deeply fond. “Before she has you calling the cops, in high school I used to babysit some middle schoolers. Now they’re all old enough to not need babysitting, except El, who really also doesn’t need it, but her dad is the sheriff and paranoid because she had a... previous shitty foster family. But I, like, bonded with all the little dorks, so now I have a bunch of freshman friends. Nothing nefarious.”

Bev could choke to death laughing at the bitter concept of older kids making friends with her when she was a freshman, as compared to using switchblades to carve words into their skin, but she can appreciate someone who’s genuinely so nice. 

“So you were watching El and she did your fingers?” 

Steve shrugs. “She’s still figuring out,” he glances at Robin. “What did you call them?”

“Societal norms.”

“Yeah, and it’s not like it’s a big deal when she gets stuff wrong. Knowing girls like Nancy and Robin and El and Ms Byers, how the fuck am I offended if some douchebag calls me a girl for having nail polish on?”

Robin interjects, “to which I’ve explained that name calling doesn’t matter, but one of those conservative fucks with antlers mounted on their truck is going to come at him with a brick, so he should tell El to stop before he gets his skull caved in.”

“To which I said Mike her boyfriend will kill me if I make her sad. He’s Nancy’s younger brother, and a fucking pitbull of a kid. So I’ll wear it for a day and by then Max’s will be so chipped from eating shit skateboarding that she’ll be ready for another coat. What are the chances Shitbread Sam kills me in one day?”

Bev knows from experience that a whole lot of disaster can fit into one day, but doesn’t have any story she’s willing to tell to back up her statement. It’s all either insane sounding, or private.

Robin snaps her gum, then says “if it’s not too weird, you can tell her she can do mine.”

“You kidding? It’s El. She wouldn’t recognize weird if Ronald Reagan wore a duck costume and did the bucket of water Footloose dance.”

Bev giggles at the mental image. It’s sweet of Robin to offer this weird foster girl some normalcy. Bev’s certain all of the boys would paint nail polish on her if she wanted. Eddie would complain about the noxious fumes being bad for his health, and he'd probably reach for his inhaler but she thinks he’d still do it. She’s less sure if they’d wear it if she wanted them to. Maybe Mike could, if he stayed on the farm with no one to look at his hands. The rest probably wouldn’t dare. Patrick is dead and Bowers is locked up, but Vic and Belch are still around, and nearly every adult is a mix of indifferent and cruel. Not worth the risk for pretty paint. 

Still though, she imagines it. Richie with black, Bill in purple and Ben cornflower blue, Eddie with Steve’s primary red, Mike pearlescent and Stan pastel yellow. It’s pretty and cute, in her daydreams. At least until she imagines Eddie’s red painted hand around Richie's throat as they grind. Mike’s and Bill’s pops of colour on each other’s hips as they fuck. Stan’s yellow splattered with white jizz as he finishes nervously jerking himself off. All twelve hands on her as she lays on a sleeping bag in the middle of the clubhouse. It’s not as cute then. She imagines it all, and touches herself in a stranger’s bed in a strange town, and wishes she were _home_.

That first fortnight of Hawkins residence Beverly spends her entire allowance on movies. Every night when Family Video closes, Bev bikes back to the house and curls up on the plaid printed couch. It’s cold enough at night to draw a knitted blanket over her legs. She watches the film of the day like she’s studying for a science quiz, with pure concentration. When it’s over and rewinding, Bev reviews the plot, the characters, the way it was filmed. She thinks about if Richie would have laughed at the dialogue, if Eddie would have hated the medical and safety inaccuracies, if Bill would have applauded the plot. Sometimes she imagines full conversations she’d have with the Losers about the movie, like she’s going crazy and has six voices in her head.

When it’s late enough that Margaret would scold her if she got up to pee and saw Bev still up, Bev turns the tv off and goes to her room. The room. It’s not her room, in her room every square inch is imbued with a memory or a laugh. She goes to bed, lies restless wishing for someone she could call late night. Not Eddie or Mike, obviously, but Bill’s parents are deadhearted and neglectful, and Richie’s are never home. And Ben’s are genuinely kind enough to understand late night calls. If she called any of the three, they’d pick up. Bev knows it. But Aunt Margaret would kill her over the long distance charges. She’d definitely stop giving her allowance, and movie rental money might be the only thing keeping Bev sane.

In the morning she makes a few scrambled eggs to go with her gallon of coffee. It tastes like shit, even with the milk and sugar, but she drinks it anyway. It’s the only thing keeping her awake. She’ll do the dishes, try to read a chapter from one of the few dozen books from the shelving in the living room. She hasn’t finished one yet, none really holding her attention. Maybe fast forward to rewatch a specific scene to double check the dialogue or the way two characters interact. Whatever it takes to kill some time.

Eventually it's late enough that she can bike back to Family Video. Around day eight of this routine Bev stopped going back to the house for a hot dinner at the table with Aunt Margaret. The rental has a microwave, and Aunt Margaret’s too busy with her research to truly care as long as Bev eats at some point. That amount of rein given means Bev can return the movie and chat with Robin and Steve for hours about what she thinks of yesterday’s recommendation, and a million other things. They’re funny and knowledgeable. Apparently Steve used to be clueless when it came to cinema, but he was a quick study. Bev imagines the two of them hanging out so Robin can school Steve on film. She imagines they both care enough about the movies they watch to pause them when they make out. It is unsettlingly difficult to say who she wants to be in that scenario. On the level of I-don’t-want-to-think-about-it as Bev’s feelings about the Losers back home. Similarly, her complete inability to not think about the pink elephant when it comes to the spiderweb of crushes in Derry is matched by her total inability to not want to study Robin’s freckles close up.

Except, as the days go on Bev doubts more and more that Steve and Robin _are_ dating. They never kiss, or hold hands. They touch each other’s hair, a punctuation of affection the same way Richie’s mom jokes are affection for Eddie, but they never leave together. Steve always gets picked up by friends. Sometimes it’s a car packed illegally full of young teenagers, sometimes it’s just Jonathan and Nancy. They never come inside, Bev’s never met them, but they come like clockwork at the end of a shift. If Robin and Steve were together, they’d leave together to go bang at one of their houses, right? It’s fucked up how she likes him a little more once she stops believing he’s sleeping with Robin. She knows it is, and tries not to think about it.

Every morning Bev makes an excuse as to why, today only, it’s okay to head over a little earlier than she did yesterday. It doesn’t take long before she’s spending almost the entire day at Family Video, following them around and having a seven hour long conversation as they clean and restock and sort. There’s nothing else in Hawkins to hold her attention, and she’s going to go downhill fast if she only thinks about the Losers twenty four seven.

She only makes the mistake of coming before two pm once. Keith is a putz, Steve was right. He’s all the worst things about Derry except the death; he’s offensive and thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and he snapped at the kids who came in to rent The Fox And The Hound. Thankfully he’s the opener while Robin’s the close. The steady evening routine lets Beverly pretend she wouldn’t shift her insomniac schedule to bright early mornings if Robin required.

Bev’s not sure the nail polish conversation was a test, per se. Steve and Robin didn’t preplan their banter to see if she was cool with them having younger friends. Why would they even care if she’s cool with it? She’s a stranger not even from their state. At the same time it kind of _was_ a litmus test, because as soon as she reveals her neutral reaction Steve’s anecdotes start heavily featuring all his friends, not just Jonathan and Nancy. By the time the first of them come inside rather than staying a shadow in the back seat of Nancy’s car at close Bev feels like she knows them.

It’s Lucas and Max. Their skin and hair colour makes it obvious. They yell hey in unison to Robin and Steve and head right for the horror section. For the last year Bev’s been pretty much over horror. Gore movies make her remember the bathroom in her father's house. More psychological shit is out too, the creeping dread reminds her of everything else. But not everyone’s lived her life, and some people find Freddie Krueger child molester coming back from the dead to alter teen’s perception of reality and murder them for his own sick satisfaction interesting, not an amalgamation of five different horrors too upsetting for words. 

When Max and Lucas come out of the stacks with Blood Cult, she knows they’re doomed. She doesn’t know what the plot is, though the butcher knife on the cover is illuminating, but the red rated R sticker means these two freshmen are not getting what they want.

Not that they’re taking no for an answer. 

“Come on Steve,” Max pleads. “It’s not like it’s going to warp my fragile delicate mind. Demodogs, remember?”

Bev’s not sure what that means. It’s an inside joke, maybe, based on how everyone else here understands. Or maybe it’s a prior horror movie Max didn’t react with terror to, as proof that Max can handle Blood Cult too. 

Steve doesn’t explain to Bev, just replies to Max with a smirk and crossed arms. “Different situation.”

Lucas attempts to get Steve to rent them the movie with the bizarre statement, “you took my sister to fight Russians. You owe me.”

“Erica gets free ice cream for life. I don’t even work at Scoops Ahoy any more, I give her an ice cream allowance. I don’t owe you dick. Next attempt.” Steve’s reply is almost as inexplicable, but somehow it stops Lucas. Are they speaking in code or something? 

Max’s face shades into distraught, bottom lip quivering. “If my brother was still alive, he’d rent it and let me watch with him.”

“Your brother sucked and constantly made bad choices.”

Robin tilts her head, an indication for Bev to come closer. Once they’re nearly face to face she whispers “he’ll totally let them rent it. A hundred percent. The fun is in how long they can argue about it first. The longest one ever made it almost twenty minutes.”

“Wow. Persistent.” Richie’d be kicked out on his ass long before that for trying to argue with a clerk. If it was important enough, Bill probably would have stolen the item and ran. Bev can’t imagine any of the others caring enough about anything to fight a clerk, unless it was Eddie and a prescription, and Mr Keene pedals all that shit like crack.

“I’m going to grab a baggie of popcorn from the back. Will you hold it if I have to check out a customer?”

“Yeah.” Bev’s not sure she views this three way debate as popcorn worthy but she’ll definitely help Robin if she needs it.

“Sweet, thanks.”

Four days after that more teens visit. Bev almost swallows her tongue when a boy walks in who looks nearly identical to Richie, only two differences separating them. Three, maybe, if you count the superficial. One, Richie’s in senior year with her, or will be in September, and this guy is definitely younger. Two, Richie’s blind as a fucking bat, and this kid isn’t wearing glasses. And three, there’s not a Hawaiian motif in sight, just a T-shirt with a robot on it. Granted, Richie would probably wear a robot shirt, but he’d wear an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt on top.

Richie clone is holding hands with a brunette girl. She’s wearing a magenta off the shoulder shirt under black suspenders attached to black rolled cuff jeans. She’s cute, and probably perfectly nice, and Bev wants to rip her face off her skull for being with Richie. The only reason she stays standing where she is is because it’s _not_ him, and Bev’s not that insane. 

“Hi, Steve,” the girl says. It could mean nothing. He’s wearing a name tag after all. 

“Hello El,” Steve says back, warm smile spread over his face.

So this is El. She doesn’t look like she’s the kind of girl who grew up in a miserable foster home, misraised to the point of not knowing that boys don’t wear nail polish. And if she’s El, he must be Mike. What a weird world, that one of her best friends and a new friend’s close friend are nearly twins.

“Are Ghostbusters and Jaws checked in? We’re showing El some classics.”

“You’re telling me you don’t own Ghostbusters? I remember your Halloween costume.”

“It wore out, and Mom won’t buy me a new one until my birthday.”

The baffled expression that comes over Steve’s face reminds Bev of the class conversations they had after Trading Spaces. According to Robin, Steve lives in a three story house with a swimming pool and a hot tub. No way he’s ever waited for a gift giving holiday to get a treasured item, not once in his life. And if Steve’s as protective of his freshmen as Robin says, Bev gives it fifty fifty odds that Steve goes to a video and record store and buys a copy for Mike by the end of the week.

Before the end of said week Mike is back. This time it’s just before close, maybe twenty minutes left before Bev has to leave her newfound friends and go back to the pervasive silence of the rental. He and another white brunet boy slide out of either side of Nancy’s back seat, slamming the doors loud enough to make everyone look up. They come in asking for The Karate Kid and argue with Steve for twenty minutes about martial arts. The conversation lasts all the way until Robin is flicking the lights off and locking the doors. Steve joins the boys in the back seat, Robin gets in her car, and Bev begins her bike ride home under the stars. Across the world Ben is probably writing poetry, Eddie probably rereading an old comic.

With Will met, and Dustin at camp, almost everyone is accounted for. All that Bev’s missing now are Jonathan and Nancy, and Robin’s Tiffany. Meeting Jonathan and Nancy seems unlikely. They’ve had half a month to come in and say hello and they haven’t yet. The chances of them abruptly changing their routine are low. Tiffany she has a little more hope with. She cares about Tiffany more too. Bev wants to know the kind of girl Robin’s close friends with. Wants to know if Robin’s the kind of person who wants to kiss all her friends too, or if that’s just something twisted inside Beverly, a product of trauma and everyone else her age in Derry being entirely unloveable.

Bev’s in the back one evening, helping Robin re-pile the wholesale candy so the newest stock is on the bottom, when it happens. Robin stills with her hands on a 64 pack of Nerds and looks at her. Bev doesn’t look away because it’s more telling than keeping eye contact. Every time Mike looks away from one of them it’s so, so obvious what he wants. The last year has been a constant exercise in concealing tells, and seeing them in others. Beverly knows she doesn’t dare look away from Robin now.

“Look. I’m just gonna ask, because you’re only here for six more weeks, even if I’m wrong. Do you like me?”

Of course Robin’s figured it out. It’s not like Bev’s not obvious herself. She knows she is. But Robin’s not supposed to acknowledge it. That’s part of the etiquette of this kind of thing; not actually pointing out said tells. 

“I’ve never liked a girl before,” Bev half answers. She’s liked exactly six boys and zero girls before.

“Okay, but do you like me?”

This is not how it’s supposed to go, Bev yells in her head. The only way she’s made it through the last year of yearning is by flatly stomping out any instinct to flirt back. Only one person is allowed to flirt at a time, the other parties have to ignore it until the person who’s been weak tamps down on themselves. Yeah, Bev’s probably looked at the constellations of her freckles a bit too often. Or maybe it’s the way she sometimes stops mid-sentence if Robin starts to talk, so she can hear every word of that feather light voice. Bev’s doing her best, and it sucks that Robin’s breaking the unspoken rules and calling her out for her mistakes.

Robin jams her hands in the double pockets of her dark teal vest. “Would it help if I told you I like you?”

“Yes,” she admits. It’s like coughing up a hairball, only for it to metamorph into a beautifully patterned butterfly. Soaring whimsey and a dry sore throat. Robin likes her back? Robin likes her back, and can say it?

“Yes you like me too?”

“Yes.” Any moment now Bev will remember how to compose full sentences again. 

“Good.” Robin smiling at her is like a sun poking through Oregon clouds, all the more beautiful for its scarcity. “Now Steve will get off my ass with his attempts at matchmaking. I love the dingus, but he and I have very different tastes in women.”

“Steve knows?” Maybe Indiana is different, but in Maine you don’t just tell people you’re... you know.

“Steve has his own weirdness. I can’t tell you, but I bet you’ll figure it out if you watch him.”

It’s a strange thing to say. Bev’s been doing nothing but watching Robin and Steve for nearly three weeks now, and she hasn’t noticed a single thing. Unless it’s that he’s affectionate with the younger teens, but if it was too much, if that was it there’s no way Robin would be friends with him, or that any of them would voluntarily visit him. Bev knows the terror of being forced, and never was a single moment of time near her father spent with a genuine smile on her face, like all these freshmen have had.

“Maybe. I don’t really want to watch him though. I’ve been watching you.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

And that’s embarrassing, it is. But it’s also the reason she’s allowed to push her hand into Robin’s pocket so they can twine fingers. The wave of, of _something_ warm and luminous that floods over her when their palms touch is worth the mortification of Robin not following proper crush etiquette.

“Do you want to come over to my place after your shift? My aunt won’t be awake, we can watch whatever movie you want to show me. Or talk. Or-” Bev can’t quite dare say it, but she hopes Robin knows what she means.

“I’d love that.”

They finish shifting the stock in the back. Beverly’s pretty sure she spends the whole time in a happy daze, an absent smile prominent on her face. When the last box of Twizzlers is properly placed, Robin has to go back to the main room, back behind her counter.

Robin doesn’t waste a second in her aim to stop Steve’s matchmaking. The second the room’s revealed as empty apart from Steve she calls out “you can stop trying to scope out if Annabelle from your country club is a lesbian.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Steve says, clearly trying to project complete ignorance of gay matters. Bev thinks Steve’s trying to protect Robin, and can appreciate the effort. It reminds her of her own friends.

“It’s okay, she knows.”

Steve takes it in stride. “Well in that case, no. I won’t stop. You deserve to get laid, and I think she’s a good candidate.”

“No, Steve. Bev _knows_.” 

All it takes is Steve looking the way they’re holding hands before a grin explodes over his face. “What are the odds? That’s great!”

Bev’s floored by the reaction. It’s one thing for Robin to say Steve’s okay with it. It’s another to have him smiling at them. Bev’s never seen a single instance of someone respecting queers in Derry, never mind being happy about them. It’s radical, and wonderful.

Things don’t change much. Her routine is still noon-time breakfast, putter, hang with Steve and Robin all afternoon and evening, and watch a movie before struggling to sleep. Only now Robin follows her home and they watch a movie together.

Things change entirely. Bev likes a girl, and a girl likes her. And when her aunt isn’t around, which is always, they pause the movie to kiss. They pause every time they want to kiss and it takes hours to get one movie watched. But Bev still isn’t sleeping well, might never sleep well again, so bedtime doesn’t exactly matter.

The freshmen -the Party, they apparently call themselves, from a long habit of playing DnD- come in ones and twos a couple more times. That is until the last Friday in July, when they all come in a swarm of bikes. All five drop their bikes on the sidewalk outside Family Video and file in. Will keeps an eye towards the window to make sure their rides don’t get stolen, and the rest descend on the employees counter to demand Steve come to Dustin’s welcome home party. As a clear afterthought they invite Robin too. 

It’s the most unwanted Bev’s felt all summer, a feeling that stings for not having the Losers to fall back on. But she’s not going to out Robin by making a scene. Hawkins might be a little bigger than Derry, and less infected by ancient madness and hate, but it’s not New York or San Francisco. There’s no reason for the freshmen to invite her, unless they know she means something to Robin, and she won’t risk Robin’s life like that.

Except Robin is brave, she doesn’t care. “Beverly’s my plus one,” she announces, putting her hand on Bev’s over the counter. 

All five younger teens turn to look at them before Mike shrugs. “Whatever. We all know Steve’s gonna have his plus two there, so what’s a plus one matter?”

As a group they turn back to Steve and begin badgering him about transporting a cake in his car, since they all ride bikes. Bev’s left wondering long past the time they leave if they just didn’t understand, didn’t pick up on the romance. Because one or two of them being okay with it, maybe. But all five is implausible. They must just think she’s a cling-on friend, just like the way Steve is apparently inviting Nancy and Jonathan. 

“You didn’t have to do that. Invite me somewhere?” It’s abrupt. It absolutely interrupts a conversation Steve and Robin were having. But Bev has to say it. She can’t say she’s never had someone do something so brave before, because she’s had friends almost die for her. They came back to Niebolt for her. What she can say is that it’s a huge move Robin made, telling them.

“Of course I didn’t have to. I wanted to. We only have four weeks left. I don’t want you out of my sight.”

“Naaaaw,” Steve drawls out. He places both hands over his heart and tucks his head down, the picture perfect reaction to seeing a cute baby animal.

“Shut up, dingus,” Robin replies. 

Bev’s own answer to Steve making a show of loving their love is throwing a handful of Mike and Ikes at him. He curses as they land scattershot around him. He’ll have to sweep them up before he stands on too many, or it’ll be a way bigger, much stickier mess.

Bev spends the rest of the evening thinking about it. Thinking about caring about someone else enough to tell the world you don’t care if they think you’re a deviant, this other person is more important than an opinion. Thinking about loving yourself enough to tell people who you really are. Bev’s well acquainted with revealing her deepest fears. Maybe it’s time to consider revealing love too. She thinks about it as she bikes to the rental and when she gets there Robin is parked in front of the house, waiting. 

She unlocks the door and lets Robin follow her in. Aunt Margaret is down the hall sleeping for her next big day of research, and Bev knows she should be leading Robin to the living room. Instead she keeps her girlfriend at the front door, hands on Robin’s hips to capture her. 

“Do you want to go to my room?” It’ll be the first time they venture off the couch, away from the kissing that makes Bev’s whole body tingle.

Robin takes her face in her hands, meets her eye to eye. “You don’t have to just because I told people about us. Sex isn’t a reward, you know that, right?”

“I want to. I think about you all the time when we’re not together.” She thinks about Robin as much as she thinks about her boys, these days, and that says a lot.

It starts off like usual. Robin crawls into Bev’s lap and tilts her head in, making her wavy hair fall into her face. It’s Bev’s lucky chance to scoop the fallen strands with bent thumbs, caressing her temples as she goes. Free from the shroud of hair Robin can lean closer and meet Bev’s lips. Robin’s taught her the best way to kiss, or at least the way she likes best. That tailoring might be an issue with a future partner, but for this summer it’s perfect. 

Good kissing has Robin gently rocking back and forth in her lap. Eventually the gravity gets to be too much and they fall back. Bev’s used to Robin undulating on top of her on the couch, an hour of kissing before their lips are sore and Robin has to go home. Falling back onto a bed feels like it has more meaning. Or it could. She knows with certainty that if she didn’t want to move things further, Robin wouldn’t say a word. She’s only a year older than Bev, but when it comes to experience she acts like it’s a hundred. Robin takes that experience seriously and has never once made Bev feel like she should push herself. 

That’s why Bev feels so safe in her choice ten or so minutes later to reach down with one hand and unbutton her jean shorts. This can stop any time it needs to, so why should it have to? Robin’s fully on top of her, but she’s constantly shifting, incapable of keeping still. Bev can pinpoint the moment Robin shifts against her wrist and realizes her girlfriend is playing with herself as they’re making out. Bev just can’t stop herself from giving her aching pussy a little relief. Robin’s so fucking hot, her tongue so wild in her mouth.

“Oh, shit. Bev,” Robin moans.

“Yeah?” She’s never been wanted like this before. Or maybe she has, maybe she has a million times over by six different people, but Robin’s the first one to be honest about it. Bev adores the feeling more than she thought she could.

“Shit, seriously. Can I- can I touch too?”

The stutter makes Bev think about Bill and wonder if he’d have the same awestruck look on his face seeing her masturbate. He would, she’s sure. But Robin’s here now, and it’s delicate feminine fingers that are tugging her shorts off so Robin can see her bare thighs. Robin runs her fingertips around the edge of Bev’s underwear, drawing all Bev’s attention to the skin there. It’s such a relief when Robin moves her hand to the right, only one layer of fabric between Robin and her pussy. She can feel the heat of Robin’s palm against her, pressing the fabric against her wetness.

Robin doesn’t let the panties stay a barrier for long though. She pulls on the elastic waist after only a few minutes of teasing and Bev raises her hips to help get the evil fabric away from her. Now it’s Robin’s thumbs on her, pulling her outer labia apart so she can really get a look. Bev preens under the attention, even as it's a little embarrassing. Robin likes what she sees. She must like what she sees, because she’s smiling. 

Then, quick as a wink, Robin darts forward to put her mouth on her. Bev shudders immediately, her whole body shaking. This is new. Not just consensually, but fully new. 

Robin lifts her head. “Was that okay?”

“Please. Oh, please more.”

Robin drops back down, this time sticking out her tongue and licking the full length of her sex. A noise breaks out of Bev’s throat. Another one comes at Robin’s second full lick. After that Bev does her best to cover her mouth with both hands. Robin works her mouth expertly, getting all the spots Bev likes touching with her fingers, and a few more beyond. It’s so nice. It’s the sexiest form of nice, but it’s still genuinely nice. She didn’t think sex could be like this, not beyond daydreams.

Bev can be forgiven for not being too attentive to Robin as she’s eating her out, it being her first time and all. It takes her a while to realize at some point Robin pulled up her skirt and started touching herself. There’s a squelching noise that doesn’t always match up with the way Robin’s sucking at her. Bev strains to sit up a little and from the new angle can see Robin is finger fucking herself. It’s so hot Bev just about comes that second. Instead she spreads her legs wider and angles her pussy some more towards Robin’s clever mouth. God, it’s so so good. 

As Beverly reaches her climax she starts rocking her hips. Robin was onto something with that this whole time, she thinks. It draws her blood to her groin and makes everything feel all the better. It’s all Bev can do to not scream her lungs out when she comes. Bev plants her feet in the bed and jams her pussy up into Robin’s face, hard, shaking through it like a rickety bridge before she finally collapses, spent.

But it’s not done. It’s barely half done. Figuring Robin knows what she likes best, when Bev gets her undressed and on her back on the bed she goes straight back to filling her pussy. The sopping wet glide of fingers into Robin’s welcoming body is stupid hot. It feels different than fingering herself. The angle is different, and usually Bev’s too distracted with how her pussy feels to notice how her fingers feel throttled tight by lust. 

Robin sticks her legs straight into the air and as Bev begins pumping her fingers Robin’s grip on her thighs pulses in the same rhythm. She’s shifting her back and ass on the sheets too, the movement making her beautiful tits bounce. It doesn’t surprise Bev that Robin is as squirmy as ever. It’s obviously her tell for being aroused. It was gentler during making out, and now that sex is happening she can’t stop. 

Bev can tell Robin’s close when she starts whipping her head left and right. Her hair is wild now, some of it standing up from the static electricity, other chunks embedded in the sweat covering her face. Robin’s knuckles turn white with the force of her grip on her thighs. Finally Bev feels a tight clench and a trickle of liquid across her palm. She wants to lick it off, but holds back. Next time she’ll go down on Robin. Next time she can have her first taste.

“Holy shit,” Bev breaths out when it’s all over.

“Yeah,” Robin says and giggles. 

It’s such a pleasant thing to hear after sex that Bev joins too, laughing for the sweetness she’s gained this summer.

“So you want to watch The Apartment now?”

“Depends. Will you eat me out again at intermission?” Bev jokes.

“If we make it that long,” Robin replies. It sounds like less of a joke coming from her. Like she really does anticipate them both getting horny again within forty five minutes. Like she would drop to her knees in the living room and spread Bev’s legs over the armrest. “Come on. Get dressed. There’s a scene I really want to show you.”

They absolutely have sex again. Right before Fran realises she loves Bud. Bev uses a throw pillow to muffle her voice, and hopes that any wet stains beneath them dry before Aunt Margaret gets up in the morning.

The welcome home Dustin party has Bev getting up the earliest she has in a month. Steve and Robin both still have to work, so the party starts at eleven so they have time to hang out. Which means Bev getting up at the ungodly hour of ten thirty. For the first time, Robin picks her up in her car. There’s no fancy dress, it just being a welcome home party, but Robin looks great anyway in a green and white striped shirt and dark green shorts. Bev would blow off the party just to make out in the car, if Robin coming out to her friends wasn’t such a big deal. They might not have understood in Family Video, but there will be no mistaking things now. If that’s the choice Robin wants to make, Bev is going to stand beside her for it.

The minute she opens the door a voice screams “don’t let Peanut Butter out!”

Bev looks down to see a tabby cat attempting to sashy past their feet and escape into the yard. Bev gingerly picks the cat up and holds it in the air until Robin can shut the door, thus trapping it. Max and Will come to the door, Max having been the one to scream at her. Will takes the responsibility away from her, and the cat seems much happier in his arms.

“Thanks. After Mews, Dustin doesn’t like pets to leave the house,” Will explains quietly.

Bev makes a questioning noise, not sure if she’s going to be filled in further. Will’s the shy one of the group, Steve says.

“Dustin's first pet. It got eaten by some ...nasty predator,” Max tells her.

“Jesus.” Bev’s never had a pet, but even she knows that’s terrible.

“Don’t weep too hard. Now they have three cats. It’s like a shelter in here with all the dander.”

Bev looks around and doesn’t see a face she doesn’t know. According to Steve Dustin’s got a pretty distinct style, Donald Duck Dunn hair sticking out from under a ball cap. There’s no one here like that.

“Where’s the boy of the hour?”

“Mrs Henderson went to pick him up early this morning. They should be home soon,” Lucas explains from where he’s sitting on the floor playing cards with Nancy and Jonathan, Will quickly slotting back into his space and picking his cards up from their face down pile.

“And she’s just letting all of you stay in her house when she’s not here?”

Steve shrugs. “The Party’s really close. I was a babysitter. Robin got to know Dustin last summer. She trusts us.”

It seems bizarre to her. Not a one of her friends' parents would let any of them inside without a connection to their child being home. Not even Ben’s, she doesn’t think. Just another way that Hawkins is different.

Bev doesn’t know any of these people, not beyond stories, and they seem pretty close knit. El’s literally sitting on Mike’s lap, Mike playing with her hair. Lucky for her, Dustin is a nerd and has an Atari. Until the van pulls up in the drive they all take turns playing, no need for small talk. Well, all of them talk to each other, but there’s no pressure to try to ingratiate herself, she can just listen and laugh when someone says something funny. Jonathan in particular has a dry wit, she can see why he and Steve are such good friends.

When Dustin opens the door, everyone shouts “you knew!”, instead of the normal ‘surprise’. Dustin laughs and the swarm of hugs begins, Ms Henderson getting out of her son’s way. 

Robin takes the chance to explain. “Last year they startled him so he maced Lucas reflexively. Therefore this year no surprise, just a well forecasted and painless party.”

Bev cackles. The mental image Robin’s painting is damn funny. She can see her friends doing that too. Boys are idiots in any state, apparently. Maybe even Canada too.

Codependency, Bev understands. If it weren’t for Robin, being in Hawkins would kill her. She thinks about the Losers all the time. The endless bickering for fun, and puppy piles, and shared music. She’s looking forward to getting it back, as much as she’ll miss Robin. So she understands Steve spending most of the party sitting between Jonathan and Nancy, a leg thrown over Jonathan’s, Nancy’s head on Steve’s shoulder as Jonathan absentmindedly rubs his thumb against Steve’s knee. She could easily see Bill, Richie, and her Mike doing the same. Affection’s been pretty important in the aftermath of otherworldly terror.

Everyone else is obviously used to it too. There’s not a reaction in sight to the friendly cuddling. Nancy and Jonathan pick Steve up every day, sometimes with a teenager in the car too. Maybe they went through something traumatizing together. Not a face your worst nightmare subdue an evil clown something, of course, the Losers have pretty much everyone beat on trauma. But a car accident or something, enough to make them not want to let go.

All Bev’s rationalizations go out the window and get replaced by befuddlement when Dustin demands everyone has second slices of cake right now, because his mom made one too and will be sad if they don’t eat it. When Steve stands he reaches out a hand to lever Nancy up and kisses her briefly, just long enough to slide it from platonic familial to they’re obviously dating. Except then he does the same with Jonathan; a hand up and the simplest of romantic kisses. Surely a few other people see it, the room is crammed with like fifteen people. But no one says anything. It’s the most civilized homophobia Bev’s ever seen, people ignoring it so they don’t have to fight about it.

Well shit, no wonder no one’s saying anything about how close she’s sitting to Robin, the fact that they’re sharing a fork for a massive slice of cake. Every person here already has practice holding in hostilities about this weird thing. Will and Mike are related to the insanity, and Dustin might as well be, so they don’t say shit. As for what’s left of the Party, they probably don’t feel comfortable demeaning their best friends’ sibling/honorary sibling either.

Bev follows the trend. She doesn’t say a thing about the trio. She eats her party snacks -cake and sour cream and onion chips, part of a complete breakfast- and plays cards and listens to the best stories Dustin has to share about camp. A girl, Suzy, features in nearly all of them. Soon enough it’s twenty to two and Robin and Steve have to go. It becomes a party of just the young ones then, Jonathan promising to pick up Will and Mike in a few hours. Bev hitches a ride with Robin, of course. What other option is there?

It’s funny riding shotgun with Robin. She can tell Nancy and Robin want to turn the drive to Family Video into a race, they keep passing each other. Normally Bev would consider that the kind of idiotic that’s fun, but right now she’s bursting with questions and needs Robin’s attention. Now that she finally has a private place to ask, she can’t hold it in any longer.

“Steve kissed Jonathan? And also Nancy. But Jonathan?”

“Yeah,” Robin replies, coasting to a halt in front of the stop sign before continuing. “I told you you’d figure out what’s weird with him if you paid attention.”

“Is it just kissing, or...”

“I don’t know if you’re asking do they go all the way and have sex or is it just curious kisses, or if they just kiss and fool around or if they’re dating and committed.”

Bev shrugs. She feels like she’s on the precipice of understanding, if only she knew more.

“Well, it’s both. They’re definitely banging it out, the amount of gross insertion sex anecdotes I have to listen to is terrible. But they’ve been romantically tangled in various combinations since junior year. I guess at some point it was easier to be a three than try to decide which two they wanted to be.”

Bev can understand that. Hell, three people only lead to three combinations and it’s confusing. Starting with a pool of seven the variations are infinite.

“And no one cares?” 

Now it’s Robin’s turn to shrug. Well, shrug and accelerate the car to overtake Nancy for the fifth time. “I mean, there’s levels? Steve’s totally estranged from his family. They’d forgive him if he stopped making an embarrassment out of himself, but I can’t see that happening. Jonathan’s dad would literally kill him if he knew, but Nancy’s better with a gun than Mr Byers and he lives the next town over anyway, and his mom’s been through a lot of shit so slutty gay alive child is better than the alternative. Dustin thinks Steve’s the man, Mike is a sarcastic punk bitch about everything that’s not his girlfriend. Sheriff’s told them probably a million times that bigamy is illegal. It’s all levels.”

“So a few days ago, when I thought they didn’t understand that we were girlfriends, it was them just being used to adult queerness?”

“I mean, I’ve been out to them for a while. I think they got it. Also? Might not just be adult queerness. I have my suspicions about Max. I don’t think she’s gay enough to break up with Lucas, but I do think she’s thought about kissing El a few times.”

“Huh.” Bev doesn’t know Max well enough to comment, but she does hope that Max doesn’t hate herself for it, if it’s true. She hopes that Max will go to her queer elders for help, if she needs it.

Once inside Family Video Bev doesn’t bombard Steve with questions. Don’t get her wrong, Robin's brief interrogation wasn’t really enough. That said, Steve didn’t harass her with questions when he found out her predilections, just essentially gave her a high five and told her to rock on. The least Bev can do is offer him equal treatment. 

Bev’s conviction holds all night, during the entire setting of the sun. And then it’s nearly time to go, they’re doing closing clean and cash, and Nancy’s car pulls into the parking lot. Bev feels herself cracking like an egg. Without so much as a word of explanation she runs outside.

Beverly’s knocking on the driver’s window of Nancy's car before she can change her mind. The moment Nancy rolls down the window Bev says “I need to ask you a personal question.”

“Robin’s girlfriend, right? You were at Dustin’s party.”

“Steve’s mentioned you,” Jonathan adds.

“Well, it’s not like we can go chat over coffee. But if you want to cross to the boulevard we should have some privacy.”

They do exactly that. As Robin and Steve rush to finish their final tasks and Jonathan sits with a rock radio channel blaring, Bev and Nancy cross the parking lot to stand on grass wet with late night dew.

“Did you worry that it was going to be them just focusing on you? Everyone just wanting a girlfriend, nothing with each other?” The question falls out of Bev’s mouth like rocks tumbling down a hill, completely unstoppable once it starts.

“For starters, it’s just Steve and Jonathan. There’s no fifty person ‘everyone’ harem.” 

“Sorry.” Is that what it’d be? A harem?

“It’s okay. I’ve just been called a slut so many times I like to make sure people are being real specific about what exactly it is they think is wrong with me.” 

Bev gets that. She has her own not too stellar reputation in Derry.

“Why are you asking? Do you know some people that want to touch you, but not each other? Because that’s okay too. There are a ton of ways to practice non-monogamy. And if you want to have three girlfriends who ignore each other but have their own girlfriends too, go for it.”

That is- Bev can think of very little she’d like less than one of the boys hooking up with her, and also having his own girlfriend, but ignoring the other Losers. That’s close to worst case scenario, actually.

“And I can tell by the look on your face that that’s not the answer you were looking for. So let’s go back to your question for a second. Did I worry that Steve and Jonathan didn’t love each other, just me? This isn’t going to help you either, but no. I can’t say that ever occurred to me. It became obvious pretty early on that there was something there, whether or not everyone was scared to acknowledge it.”

Nancy was right, that is pretty useless. Bev’s regretting coming out here more and more with each sentence.

“Look. I don’t know your situation. I don’t know your specific details. It’s hard to give advice like this. But here’s something that’s safe to say for pretty much any scenario: be honest, and speak out. You’re never going to get what you want if you don’t risk people knowing you want something.”

“Uh. Yeah. Okay.” Technically speaking Nancy’s probably right. Realistically, Robin forcing a conversation was a nightmare that happened to have a happy ending, and that only because Bev was willing to step out. That same conversation with a big group of embarrassed boys? No way it’s not getting laughed at and turned into a joke as a means of self preservation.

“Just think about it. And think about the fact that I can see Steve getting into my car, and we’re going to go home and do exactly what we want to each other, because we talked about it.” Nancy ends her lecture with a smirk, and strolls back to the car.

Beverly stays alone on the boulevard, just for a moment. And then she goes and picks up her bike so she can ride back to the house. Robin will be waiting for her. For the rest of the night she’s going to forget the hopeless future, and the stressful past, and concentrate on what the present has to offer. Namely a gorgeous girl with freckles like scattered salt who fucks like she’s in communion with a divine spirit.

For the next two weeks Beverly’s life stays focused on Robin. There’s a solid chunk of Steve, and occasional dashes of the freshmen. Now that he’s home Dustin drops by every day too, though he never rents anything, just consults Steve for a million different reasons. Mostly though, Bev tries to stay in the moment and be with her girlfriend. If it’s only Steve in the store, he doesn’t care if they make out between the stacks on occasion. It’s gentlemanly of him, in a peculiar way. And of course there’s their nights together. Mustn't forget about that.

And then Robin pauses Monty Python and the Holy Grail, right as the Black Knight begins his battle. Bev has mixed feelings about that. She wants to see this scene, it’s one of the funniest parts of the movie. But if Robin’s pausing it’s probably for a kiss, or more. Bev can’t say no to the rustling of Robin pulling her t-shirt off, not ever.

Except Robin doesn’t twist in for a kiss. Instead she says, “you know how you’ve been here almost two months and I haven't talked to your aunt once? Is that because she’s really permissive and doesn’t care who you meet, or because she’s strict and if she meets me officially you’ll have a ton of rules to follow?”

“How about because she works day shift, and you work night shift? She can’t stay up ‘til midnight to meet you, that’s all. No big conspiracy.”

“Okay, I guess what I’m really asking is,” Robin takes a breath to psych herself up. “A favourite band of mine is playing in Chicago next week. Me and Tiffany are going, and I was going to force Steve to go, even though it’s not his taste. But since he doesn’t care, and actually, probably actively doesn’t want to go, do you want to go on a roadtrip for a concert?”

She always thought that this would be a milestone between her and the guys. They don’t entirely share tastes in music, no matter what’s on the stereo one of them is complaining. But it wouldn’t have been about the music, but the life experience. Stopping at gas stations for snacks, Stan yelling at them to not get any crumbs on the upholstery. Feet dangling out the window, shoelaces flapping in the breeze. Driving down an empty highway in the sunset, pulling to the shoulder to exchange passengers between the two cars that’d be needed for the next leg of the trip. Having the world offer the experience to her through Robin pulls the rug out from under her, for a second.

Except what’s she going to say? No? Miss out on dancing beside Robin, sweaty bodies sliding together. Miss being anonymous enough to be able to hold hands safely, maybe even kiss. How can she turn down an adventure like this, just because her Losers aren’t with her?

“I’d love to. What band is it? Do I know them?”

“They’re called Kingdom of Empty Pockets. No? I’ll bring my favourite tape in tomorrow, you can listen to songs in snippets when we have to actually talk to customers and do work and shit.”

Bev sits, listening to Robin rant about why they’re amazing, how they have the best guitar players, and how the drums always make her heart beat faster. Bev thinks in another life, one where she’d moved here permanently, she could have fallen deeply in love with Robin. She thinks about her Losers, and how she’d attend anything if it put a smile on their faces, or if they needed her to. You can’t get much rougher than showing up in a sewer to fight evil.

Telling Aunt Margaret of the concert goes exactly how Bev plans it. Knowing she can handle sleep deprivation much better than being forced awake in the middle of a REM cycle, Bev stays up rather than nap between Robin going home and her alarm going off. Ten minutes before Margaret is due to rise, Bev splashes some cold water on her face and changes into a new shirt that’s not smelly from a day’s worth of sweat, Family Video’s air conditioning being mediocre at best. Then she goes to the kitchen and makes the coffee she knows Margaret drinks because there’s always a mug near the sink when Bev has her noon time breakfast.

It’s not that Aunt Margaret accepts bribes. Not really. She just understands bartering, and that showing appreciation means doing something worth appreciating. Bev will be forever in debt for getting her out of her father’s house, but one act of extreme kindness doesn’t mean eternal fealty. Healthy relationships are checks and balances, not adoration or terror.

“I’ve been pretty cold shoulder this summer, I know.”

“As far as teenage snits go, I’ve heard of worse. But yes, it’s been chilly.”

Bev tries to let the first half of the comment go, but can’t quite make it to calm. “Being upset about being forced into abandoning friends for your last summer before everyone splits for university is not a snit. But anyway, I’m willing to declare a truce, if you let me do something. The friends I’ve made here want to drive to Chicago for a concert, stay overnight at a hotel then drive back. I’d be gone two days.”

“See, you have made friends! I told you you’d be fine, you’d find someone to spend your time with.”

Yeah, of course she doesn’t understand. If she’d said you’ve torn me away from my crush, maybe Margaret would feel differently. Everyone prizes love so much. But of course Bev couldn’t have said that, and friendship doesn’t carry the same connotations to anyone else.

Bev keeps her voice as even as she can when she says “can I go?”

“You’ll need to memorise the house phone number, and my work number, in case you need help. You know what hours I work, when I’ll be where.”

Bad at listening but there for the rescue, that’s Aunt Margaret to a tee.

“I’m going to call Robin and tell her it’s on then, okay?” The news could wait until the afternoon, when Bev bikes over to the rental place, but better Robin knows now so she can adjust any previously created plans. Bev’s going to be late anyway. She’s been up close to a full day now, she needs a nap. Hopefully the comfort of her graffitied blanket will be enough to eke out an hour or two.

When Robin picks her up around noon on Thursday, Bev runs out to the car with only a backpack slung over one arm. She doesn’t have much to take with her. A T-shirt to sleep in and a pair of undies to start fresh with tomorrow morning. It also holds a book and her Walkman, in case she can’t sleep. It’ll be better for her mental health to sit in the hallway or the bathroom and read all night rather than trying to force herself to sleep. Snacks and her wallet, to have her food bases covered. Cigarettes. Her camera, in case there’s anything noteworthy to record. And a pad, because if Bill can throw up every time it rains and Eddie can keep his inhaler at the ready, Bev can make sure she always has a pad on her no matter what time of the month it is. 

“I told Tiffany we’d be at her house around twelve thirty. We’re running early. Wanna make out for ten minutes?”

Bev laughs out loud. Robin’s just so easy to be around. 

“I’m taking that as a yes,” Robin says. She stretches over the cup holder to take Bev’s head in her hands. At the first touch of their tongues Bev mentally decides she’s not going to be the one with an eye on the clock. She’s not going to be the one to say they need to stop and get a move on.

Robin doesn’t just idle in front of Tiffany’s house. She parks in the drive and gets out of the car, gestring for Bev to do the same. Bev would love to hold her hands walking up the drive, but she doesn’t know how grossed out Tiffany is by Robin rubbing it in her face. Or if Tiffany’s parents are home, and if they know Tiffany spends time with a dyke. Bev can think of a lot of parents who wouldn’t be too happy about that sort of company. So Bev keeps her hands in her pockets as Robin rings the doorbell, and hopes that no one nasty opens the door. It’s her summer vacation, she doesn’t deserve dealing with another Ms Kaspbrak.

“Hey, birdies,” Tiffany says as she throws open the door. At least Bev has to assume it’s her, based on Robin's friendly reaction. Tiffany is a bleached beauty, a toxic acid dripping rocker. Her white jean jacket is covered in studs and her acid washed jeans are glittering with hundreds of safety pins that they’re adorned with. There’s a rare chance that she was born with white blond hair, otherwise it was freshly dyed because Bev can’t see any roots.

“Hey. You ready to go?”

“I’m not the one who works closing shift every night. Unlike some, I’m capable of getting shit done in the morning.”

“Oh, bite me.”

The seating arrangement changes as they pile back into the car. Tiffany gets to the passenger seat first, leaving Bev with the back seat. It’s not ideal, but Bev figures maybe they’ll stop to buy Big Gulps or something and they can switch back then. Even if they don’t, there’s a whole night of standing beside her girlfriend listening to music planned. Bev will get her proximity fix sooner or later.

The drive to Chicago is nothing compared to her last road trip, only four hours. It’s also far more enjoyable. Tiffany has great taste in music. Good thing, considering Bev’s already committed to seeing a band she’s never heard of. Tiffany passes her the foam lined cassette box bag and Bev unzips it to pick their next songs. More than half the cassettes are mix tapes, cases carefully labelled with what’s on them. Tiffany’s clearly the kind of girl that spends whole nights listening to rock radio with her finger hovering over record. 

The cassette Bev picks starts with The Runaways. Not the most popular of their tracks, Cherry Bomb, but a lesser known I Wanna Be Where The Boys Are. Bev can sing about half the song. She’s got the chorus and the various ferocious screams. In the front Robin and Tiffany have it down pat, word for word. They can even hum the different instruments. If they had microphones no one would know them from Joan Jett. Bev is surprised by how much she’s enjoying herself. Maybe she should talk the guys into doing karaoke with her, when she gets home. Bev could see Ben doing it for New Kids, and Richie rocking some major air guitar with Metallica. 

The hotel room’s already booked, picked for its location near the concert venue. Once they stop for an early dinner of McDonald’s it’s the first place they go. Tiffany sits on the edge of a bed and unzips her duffle. She starts taking out articles of clothing one by one, laying them on the bed. It’s like she brought her entire closet. Or maybe not. Everything laid out is all very punk rock, and surely even the most punk of teens needs a dress grandma won’t have a heart attack over.

Bev ducks into the bathroom to check how many complimentary towels they have. It’d be nice to be able to build herself a soft nest of sorts, if she has to stay in there all night. The alternative is sitting on the carpet in the hallway, but it’ll be easier for things to sneak up on her that way. And she'd be alone. She’d rather stay in the room, if possible. 

When she comes back out, with a mental note to go to the concierge and ask if she can get a few extra pillows, Robin is next to Tiffany. They’re lightly bickering about the assortment of clothing, and who’s going to wear what. It’s cute, how much they care. Bev cares, she wants to listen to Kingdom of Empty Pockets and enjoy her first concert, but Robin _really_ cares. Enough to build a costume of sorts.

“You wanna come pick something out?” Tiffany asks. It’s a little over friendly for a first meeting, even a prolonged one. But then again, so’s helping people shoplift, probably. Bev is quick to make friends, when decent people exist near her.

Bev winds closer to the bed covered in clothing. “You two pick first. It’s your stuff. I’ll take something you don’t want.” She really doesn’t care what shirt she wears, after all. 

“Yeah, okay. Then I’ll pack up all the leftovers, so we don’t have to do it later when we get back. Nothing worse than having to actually accomplish shit after a concert.” 

“Remember Clinton’s essay?” Robin cackles. “That was the worst grade you ever got. You were so bratty about your time management skills, and you fuckin’ failed like a dweeb.”

“Yeah well, freshman me was stupid. I prep in advance now. This bed will be tidy in twenty minutes, so post concert me doesn’t have to deal. She can just lay down in bliss. Speaking of, me and Robin will share a bed, you get the other one.”

Bev’s still trying it parse out the reasoning -is Tiffany homophobic, a love the sinner hate the sin type? Or maybe she doesn’t know at all. Bev thought everyone In Robin’s life knew but maybe not- when Tiffany continues “no sex unless you include me.”

The statement opens a whole new can of worms. Are Tiffany and Robin exes who stayed friends? Or friends who experimented? Is she serious? How many people in Hawkins are dating multiple people? Is this just like a swinger town or something? Should she have a threesome this vacation, since it might be the only time she’ll ever have the chance? 

Robin shoves Tiffany hard enough that she falls off the bed. “You fuckin’ goblin.”

She’s not really mad, just the mad of Stan or Eddie to Richie. They’re both giggling. Goblin is their Trashmouth. Does that mean the offer was a joke too? For her own sanity she decides that it was. She has other sexual concerns, she’s not going to worry about having a threesome with her summer girlfriend and a stranger.

Bev waits for Robin and Tiffany to pick out their outfits and change. It’s the strangest changing room atmosphere she’s ever been in. Bev is no stranger to changing around others. When it’s at school, for gym class, everything and everyone is a threat. Greta is the worst of them, but everyone else can be persuaded to join her. If that happens sometimes it’s just name calling, but sometimes her clothing goes missing, or gets soaked in the shower, or coated in garbage. When changing happens at the quarry it’s a different kind of threat, everyone trying to look at different times so they all have plausible deniability to the danger crawling through their minds. And most recently, seeing Robin changing has been a source of lust. It’s completely foreign to be casually changing clothes with female friends like society tells her girls do all the time. It’s strange. Nice, and Bev soaks in the feeling for what it is, but knows she can’t let herself get used to it. Derry will never let her have a feeling like this.

After trying on and discarding a few different articles, Bev ends up liking what she’s in, a lot. Her bottoms are black and white checkerboard stirrup pants. They’re tighter fitting than she usually goes for, she’s more of jean shortalls kind of girl, but they look nice. On top is a patchy herringbone print, part black and white squares, part red and blue. Tiffany convinces her to tie a knot in the hem to make it fit close to her stomach, and it really brings it together. 

Around six they leave to walk to the venue. It’s close, only a few blocks away, but Tiffany takes longer to move around in her platformed leather boots. They lace up to just under her knee, and Bev would love to see Robin in them. Or one of her boys. Why do stunning boots and shoes and high heels have to be gendered, anyway? Bill would look great in some high heels. They show their tickets to the man at the door and he steps aside to let them in, no problem. Maybe it says something about Bev that she expects everything to include problems, and an easy time is a pleasant surprise. Maybe it’s just reality.

Just inside the doors is a merch booth and a fully stocked bar. Bev doesn’t really care about either. She can’t buy a drink, the kind of low grade criminals who would sell her a fake ID are the same kind of guys who’d expect to be paid in sex, given her reputation around town. Of all the Losers only Ben has one, which was actually gifted to him by his parents because they’re bizarre hippies that don’t believe in age restrictions. Nor is she going to spend so much on a souvenir shirt when she doesn’t even know if she likes them live. It’s been pressed upon her several times today that all bands sound totally different recorded than live. 

Over the next half hour the empty concrete floor fills with fans. It’s the first concert Bev’s ever been to. She’s seen them in movies, and recorded to play on tv, but the closest she’s come to a real concert is being forced to attend the school’s choir concert as part of Mr Lewicki’s caregiver detention attempts. He’s full of enrichment detentions to rehabilitate Beverly Marsh into an upstanding citizen despite the fact that no one in Derry wants her to be a citizen. She’s planted flowers for the school garden too, to show her the calm beauty of the natural world, and picked up cigarette butts to show her why she should stop the nasty habit. She can’t entirely remember what the point of attending a choir concert was, the healing power of music maybe? It’s not like Mr Lewicki’s entirely wrong, even. She bonded with Ben first over New Kids before anything else. But this concert is of course nothing like that. Everyone at the choir concert dressed normally, in dark jeans and white shirts. Here everyone’s clad in their freakiest most fabulous clothes. It’s like three hundred people all sharing a warehouse sized wardrobe with Tiffany. Beyond all the unique clothing there are no three rows of kids standing on risers, just guitars resting on stands and an expansive drum kit. There are huge amplifiers stacked on the edges of the stage too, letting Bev predict a future of ringing ears. The choir was only as loud as it’s loudest singer.

The floor fills to the point of rubbing elbows with strangers. It should feel as dangerous as a Derry High hallway, potential threats in every direction, but it doesn’t. Maybe it’s because everyone seems happy and excited to be here, compared to the sarcasm and abject misery of her school. Bev watches everyone around her go wild as the band walks on stage. Tiffany and Robin are both screaming. No words, there’s nothing to articulate, it’s just excitement undiluted. Four men settle behind their instruments, all to the soundtrack of punk kids yelling. The band waits for the crowd to settle, then says hello to Chicago and introduces themselves as the Kingdom of Empty Pockets, which makes everyone burst into cheers and shouts again. And then they begin to play.

Bev quickly learns that she loves the atmosphere, even if the music itself isn’t her favourite genre. She’s surrounded by bodies on all sides, enthusiastic and beautifully costumed and some of them tipsy in a fun way, a way she’s trained herself to treat differently than the kind of drinking her father did. It’s a nightmarescape for Eddie, tinnitus and random bruising and germs but those things don’t concern her. She sings along -shouts along- with the few choruses she recognises from Robin’s cassettes and lets her body move.

For all that she’s excited, Robin and Tiffany are losing their minds. They’ve either forgotten they’re in a crowd or lost their individual sanity to a collective mind, because the flailing and screaming and punching don’t belong to normal people in groups but they’re only two of hundreds doing so in here. Bev throws an elbow out, stomps her feet, feels someone’s sweaty back press against her face for a second before they boomerang away. It’s remarkable how much it feels like throwing rocks at Bowers.

Bev’s heart skips about ten beats when Robin pulls her close a few songs in. It’s not a purposeful bodycheck like everyone is doing here, relatively to the beat of the music. It’s way more intentional than that. Everyone else is driving into someone then ricocheting off. Tiffany’s halfway across the crowd now. But Robin's not letting her bounce, she’s holding Bev to her. And then she kisses her. In front of god and strangers Robin’s _kissing her_. Maybe Dustin’s party wasn’t the risk Bev thought it was at the time, but there’s no other way to classify this. Sure she daydreamed about this, in the few days after Robin’s invitation, but she never thought it’d happen. She daydreams all the time and nothing ever comes of anything. Safety should be dictating that a kiss like this can’t happen.

No one cares. It’s a huge shock. It’s not even that no one notices, because she sees some eyes briefly on them. It’s truly that no one in this weird outer fringes group cares. It makes Bev want Richie here, so she could just shove him into a pretty mohawked boy. She doesn’t actually want it, she wants him to want them. But Bev wants the gesture of it. She wants Richie to feel free, and unafraid. This feels so good, how could she not want to share it with her scared and secret concealing friends?

From that moment on the concert has a sexual component too. Bev’s not turned on by the band members. They’re too old, and completely not her type. Nor is it the constant press of others against her skin. Maybe if she was touch starved, but even without the Losers she has Robin and Steve. No, what turns her on is how thrilled Robin is to be here. Over the long set Robin whirls on her for an adrenaline fueled kiss several more times, Bev happily opening her mouth for her girlfriend once she sees no one is going to bash her and break her ribs for the audacity.

During one magical kiss Robin’s hand drops to rub against the crotch of her stirrup pants. She doesn’t go as far as public partial nudity, but she doesn’t need to. It’s so hot to be kissed and touched in public that Bev is throbbing. She climaxes from being rubbed outside two clingy layers of cloth. It makes her burst into laughter. It makes her scream a chorus and crash her shoulder into someone’s back. It’s amazing.

It’s too soon when the concert is over. Bev thinks that three days from now might be too soon, the way her entire body is buzzing. She expects the people around her to start heading for the exit, but that’s not what happens. Everyone just stands still, hollering and screaming and clapping. Bev’s heard of a standing ovation before, but only for theatre. She didn’t know concerts did them too.

Much to her surprise, Kingdom of Empty Pockets runs back on stage. Bev’s surprise must show on her face, because Robin leans in and yells in her ear over the drummer’s drumroll “it’s called an encore. Most bands have them, come back on stage after a dose of applause.”

Bev’s spent her miracles already, getting away from her father’s house and meeting the guys and getting rescued from the deadlights. She can’t fairly say something as simple as a band playing four more songs counts as another for the list. But it is wonderful to get a handful more music. They play one of their own songs, then three covers. The scratchy throated punk version of Queen’s Melancholy Blues is Bev’s favourite, but the covers of White Wedding and Hotel California are good too. Robin spends the whole time jumping and screaming the lyrics, and Bev wants to capture this moment and keep it forever. Use it as a joyful memory to bolster her mood, twenty six years from now when she has to fight terror incarnate a second time.

As the final notes of Hotel California play, the stage lights begin strobing wildly, flashing light of all colours on the band. The people around Bev take it as their cue to begin their last round of cheering. This time though, there’s no expectation of a return to music. The lights come on in the venue, and everyone starts the slow shuffle out of the exit doors. Robin holds tightly onto Bev’s hand to not lose her in the crowd, and tugs her past the bottleneck at the merch booth out of the building.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Tiffany?” Bev asks. The hotel’s not very far away, but you never know when a mugger might be out. Or worse.

“We are. We will. She knows to meet at the first traffic light past the venue.” Right. Because of course they’ve been here together before. No doubt they’ll be here a hundred more times together, after she’s back in Maine. This is Tiffany’s life, Bev’s just a visitor.

It takes until they stop at the traffic light before Bev remembers to let go of Robin’s hand. Sure the sidewalks around them are still full of dispersing punk kids, but soon enough it’ll be just her and Robin and the normal people, and it’s not safe to flaunt this, as much as she’d like to. With deepest reluctance Bev untwines their fingers and puts her hands on her hips. It’s not a long wait before Tiffany is hobbling up to them, her hair deflated and ruined from a night in a moshpit.

“So how’d you like your first concert, sweet little music baby?”

“I thought it was really great!” Less so the music than the mood, maybe, but that doesn’t change that it’s still been a terrific time.

“I know! When Zane did that solo during Hammering The Days, I just about fucking died,” Tiffany agrees.

Robin chimes in with her opinion of the solo, and Bev grins. She has a feeling nightmares and insomnia are not going to be an issue tonight. She doesn’t think any of them will be sleeping, too wired from the concert to stop talking. Which means Bev won’t get to have hotel room sex with Robin once Tiffany’s snoring and Robin can sneak under her covers, but it’s a small price to pay. Bev’s more sure now than ever that a concert with friends is a milestone all the Losers will have to hit before they leave for college, even if it nearly kills Eddie and Stan. Everyone deserves the clean adrenaline high she’s having now, nothing nasty festering underneath.

After the trip to Chicago the time just withers away. Mornings spent in sporadic sleep and boredom, afternoons and evenings with friendly conversation, late nights watching movies and having great sex. It’s nothing that hasn’t been happening for weeks, but it feels different when each day is one less before Bev leaves. Which granted was always true from her first night at Family Video, that's how time works, but it feels different now.

“We’re still on the same page, right?” 

“Hmm?” Bev murmurs, eyes closed and the nape of her neck on Robin’s thigh, sprawled over the rental house’s couch.

“Not attempting long distance. I really like you, but I just can’t see it working,” Robin says apologetically.

It’s a conversation worth opening her eyes for. Bev smiles to show no hard feelings, and agrees. “Nothing’s changed since our first kiss. It’s been a really good summer, about a million miles better than last summer, you don’t even know-”

“Oh, I think I might,” Robin interrupts. Unlikely, not a lot compares to fighting a monster, but Bev’s not going to argue the point.

“But I’m leaving and I'm not coming back. So no, we’re on the same page.” Once Bev gets out of her awful hometown she’s never living anywhere with less than a million people.

“I’m going to fuck you so hard before you go that you’ll feel me for a week in Derry.”

“Wow. You’re so hot. Who gave you permission to be this hot?”

Robin doesn’t show her permission slip to Bev, choosing instead to pull up the hem of Bev’s shirt and suck on her nipple through her bra. The conversation pretty much stops for a while after that.

In the end though, the prediction comes close to coming true. On Beverly's last night Robin doesn’t go home. After work Steve and Robin both come over to watch some movies and talk. Steve brings a case of beer with him and they get a little tipsy but nothing outrageous. Around three am he calls Jonathan. Robin insists on watching him walk down the sidewalk to the car. She doesn’t close the front door until he’s safely buckled in and Nancy’s driving away. It’s more proof that something bad happened in the past, but if they didn’t share with the outsider the whole summer it’s not going to happen now. Robin takes her hand and leads Bev to the bedroom, and for the next four hours things are passionate. Not just the sex, though that is great. But sleeping with Robin, having someone to curl around. She didn’t know how much she’d like that romantically. Platonically, of course, Bev’s spent more than one night hanging out with someone having a particularly memory besieged night, and there’s little more soothing than sleeping with company. But Bev’s in love with Robin, as much as she can be on this timeline, and sleeping beside her makes Bev’s heart flutter.

She drifts off smelling Robin’s hair, and wakes up to a pointed chin digging into her pelvis, Robin smiling up at her from the bottom of the bed. “Can I?”

“Yes. Always yes.” It’ll be their last time, they literally have no time left for more than one climax each, but Bev’s not saying always literally now is she.

At seven am aunt Margaret knocks on the door. “Beverly? Beverly, it’s time to wake up. We need to leave soon.”

Bev wakes up from the post sex haze just enough to make sure it doesn’t look like she’s been fucked five ways from Sunday. Disheveled from sleepover silliness is fine. It’s not like Margaret’s going to miss the girl coming out of her room, she’s not blind. Sheet soaking sex marathon? Better to not press things and see if Margaret’s opinion of queers matches the Derry norm.

“I had a really good summer with you,” Bev says, tugging on a hem. She doesn’t want to be tearing up, but her eyes are watery and unlike Eddie, there are no allergies for her to pin it on. 

“Yeah,” Robin whispers. “Me too.” 

“I hope you find the best girlfriend ever. Maybe let Steve help you. He means well.”

“Thanks. And no. Different tastes. I hope you figure out what you want from your Losers.”

“What?”

“Bev, sprinting out into the darkness to interrogate Nancy and Jonathan on more than two people couples wasn’t subtle. I’m not one of those lesbians who won’t date a bi girl. I just want you to be happy.”

Their last kiss is chaste, close mouthed. Bev tucks Robin’s hair behind her ears one last time and picks up her packed duffle, draping her graffitied blanket over her shoulder. They head down the hallway together, then break at the front door. Bev angles towards Aunt Margaret’s car, and Robin doesn’t have anything left to do but walk to her own car parked halfway down the block. Robin pulls away from the spot and is gone from sight before Aunt Margaret is ready to go, and Bev’s not sure if it’s a good thing. Parting hurts. But what’s the alternative? Robin following their car out of town, Bev getting a few last looks in the rear view mirror? At some point there’d still have to be separation. It’s not like Robin could come back to Derry with her. Bev wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.

She has lots of time to think over the next day and a half. Her Walkman keeps Aunt Margaret at bay, as does the open summer reading book that Bev pages through without catching more than a word or two. Uninterrupted, Bev lets her thoughts wander. Bev thinks about Robin. She thinks about Steve, and Steve+Nancy+Jonathan. She thinks about survival vs living life in a hostile environment. She thinks about starting relationships that have clearly delineated end dates. She thinks about love, and hope, and certain foretold death, and getting what you want. 

Bev doesn’t sleep in the hotel room, she sits in the bathroom and goes through her third pair of batteries in two days as she flips through cassettes. Different tracks make different ideas become forefront, and she wonders if in the future she’ll be able to listen to any of these songs without flashing to her philosophy at the time. 

The second they cross the state line, pass from to New Hampshire to Maine, Bev’s skin starts itching. Never mind that it’ll be a few hours until they’re back in Derry. Her body doesn’t recognise useless concepts like time, just wants what it craves. Her boys. She needs six hugs, right now. She needs the dull clacking of pill bottles in Eddie’s fanny pack, she needs Bill’s stutter and Ben’s research and the grey cloud of Richie’s cigarettes. She needs Mike’s working the land smell and Stan’s nature watching. Bev needs six goddamn hugs right goddamn now, and the fact that she’s only just entering Maine is a criminal shame.

At the five miles to Derry sign, Bev breaks. “Drop me off at Bill’s. Please, I promise I’ll help air out the house later, do my laundry, whatever you need, just... please?” 

It’s Bill, or Ben, or maybe Mike’s barn, but Ben’s place comes with affectionately nosy parents, and Mike’s barn has no running water or electricity. Bill’s has the privacy of neglect and the option to make popcorn. Richie’s is nearly always empty too, but his neighbours spy on and count visitors, and report to the Toziers on their rare returns home. Richie already gets enough shit for letting Stan practically live with him, he doesn’t need false reports of house parties on top of it.

“Well, okay,” she says, voice only somewhat reluctant.

“Thank you,” Bev says. There’s no need to hide her desperation, it’s not like Aunt Margaret doesn’t already know. She needs to see them, that’s all. She’s vibrating with the need. Seeing them will close the cover on her summer book with Robin, and hopefully start a new tome. A War and Peace, Lord Of the Rings, The Count of Monte Cristo length tome, because Bev can't imagine ever getting to the last page with her Losers.


End file.
